Missed foot fractures in polytrauma patients: a retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Missed foot fractures are a known problem in the care of the traumatized patient. They do not usually have an influence on the survival, but on the long-term result and the quality of the patient''s life. The aim of this study is to find out how many of these fractures are overlooked in a Level I trauma center and what the consequences for the patients are hypothesing that patients with a delayed diagnosis will have worse clinical results. METHODS: Forty-seven patients (7.3%) with foot fractures could be identified in 642 polytrauma patients, retrospectively. All patients were divided into two groups: early diagnosed fractures and delayed diagnosed fractures, the latter defined as diagnosed after Secondary Survey. Patients were evaluated according to the Hannover Outcome Score, the Short Form-36 Health Survey, the AOFAS Score and the Hannover Scoring System. The average follow-up was 5 years and 8 months. Reasons for overlooking a foot fracture were analyzed. RESULTS: The foot fracture was early diagnosed in 26 (55.3%) patients, but delayed in 21 (44.7%). There were no significant differences in the mean stay in the hospital or in the ICU. The fractures that were most often missed were those of the cuboid or the metarsalia. The highest risk factor for a delayed diagnosis was a fracture already diagnosed on the same foot. In 52.4% of the delayed diagosed fractures, an operative therapy was necessary. There were no significant differences between the two groups in the clinical results. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, the results of this study show that foot injuries can be a safety problem for the patient and the examination of the feet in the trauma room has to be a compulsory part of the algorithm. Although the majority of delayed diagnosed foot fractures demonstrated comparable results to the immediately diagnosed fractures, approximately 10% might have benefited from an earlier diagnosis. Even if there were no significant differences in the clinical results, we have to be aware that missing a fracture in the foot can lead to worse results in the complete polytrauma care

Effects of mesenchymal stromal cells versus serum on tendon healing in a controlled experimental trial in an equine model

Abstract Background Mesenchymal stromal cells (MSC) have shown promising results in the treatment of tendinopathy in equine medicine, making this therapeutic approach seem favorable for translation to human medicine. Having demonstrated that MSC engraft within the tendon lesions after local injection in an equine model, we hypothesized that they would improve tendon healing superior to serum injection alone. Methods Quadrilateral tendon lesions were induced in six horses by mechanical tissue disruption combined with collagenase application 3 weeks before treatment. Adipose-derived MSC suspended in serum or serum alone were then injected intralesionally. Clinical examinations, ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging were performed over 24 weeks. Tendon biopsies for histological assessment were taken from the hindlimbs 3 weeks after treatment. Horses were sacrificed after 24 weeks and forelimb tendons were subjected to macroscopic and histological examination as well as analysis of musculoskeletal marker expression. Results Tendons injected with MSC showed a transient increase in inflammation and lesion size, as indicated by clinical and imaging parameters between week 3 and 6 (p < 0.05). Thereafter, symptoms decreased in both groups and, except that in MSC-treated tendons, mean lesion signal intensity as seen in T2w magnetic resonance imaging and cellularity as seen in the histology (p < 0.05) were lower, no major differences could be found at week 24. Conclusions These data suggest that MSC have influenced the inflammatory reaction in a way not described in tendinopathy studies before. However, at the endpoint of the current study, 24 weeks after treatment, no distinct improvement was observed in MSC-treated tendons compared to the serum-injected controls. Future studies are necessary to elucidate whether and under which conditions MSC are beneficial for tendon healing before translation into human medicine

Missed foot fractures in polytrauma patients: a retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Missed foot fractures are a known problem in the care of the traumatized patient. They do not usually have an influence on the survival, but on the long-term result and the quality of the patient''s life. The aim of this study is to find out how many of these fractures are overlooked in a Level I trauma center and what the consequences for the patients are hypothesing that patients with a delayed diagnosis will have worse clinical results. METHODS: Forty-seven patients (7.3%) with foot fractures could be identified in 642 polytrauma patients, retrospectively. All patients were divided into two groups: early diagnosed fractures and delayed diagnosed fractures, the latter defined as diagnosed after Secondary Survey. Patients were evaluated according to the Hannover Outcome Score, the Short Form-36 Health Survey, the AOFAS Score and the Hannover Scoring System. The average follow-up was 5 years and 8 months. Reasons for overlooking a foot fracture were analyzed. RESULTS: The foot fracture was early diagnosed in 26 (55.3%) patients, but delayed in 21 (44.7%). There were no significant differences in the mean stay in the hospital or in the ICU. The fractures that were most often missed were those of the cuboid or the metarsalia. The highest risk factor for a delayed diagnosis was a fracture already diagnosed on the same foot. In 52.4% of the delayed diagosed fractures, an operative therapy was necessary. There were no significant differences between the two groups in the clinical results. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, the results of this study show that foot injuries can be a safety problem for the patient and the examination of the feet in the trauma room has to be a compulsory part of the algorithm. Although the majority of delayed diagnosed foot fractures demonstrated comparable results to the immediately diagnosed fractures, approximately 10% might have benefited from an earlier diagnosis. Even if there were no significant differences in the clinical results, we have to be aware that missing a fracture in the foot can lead to worse results in the complete polytrauma care

Missed foot fractures in polytrauma patients: a retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND: Missed foot fractures are a known problem in the care of the traumatized patient. They do not usually have an influence on the survival, but on the long-term result and the quality of the patient''s life. The aim of this study is to find out how many of these fractures are overlooked in a Level I trauma center and what the consequences for the patients are hypothesing that patients with a delayed diagnosis will have worse clinical results. METHODS: Forty-seven patients (7.3%) with foot fractures could be identified in 642 polytrauma patients, retrospectively. All patients were divided into two groups: early diagnosed fractures and delayed diagnosed fractures, the latter defined as diagnosed after Secondary Survey. Patients were evaluated according to the Hannover Outcome Score, the Short Form-36 Health Survey, the AOFAS Score and the Hannover Scoring System. The average follow-up was 5 years and 8 months. Reasons for overlooking a foot fracture were analyzed. RESULTS: The foot fracture was early diagnosed in 26 (55.3%) patients, but delayed in 21 (44.7%). There were no significant differences in the mean stay in the hospital or in the ICU. The fractures that were most often missed were those of the cuboid or the metarsalia. The highest risk factor for a delayed diagnosis was a fracture already diagnosed on the same foot. In 52.4% of the delayed diagosed fractures, an operative therapy was necessary. There were no significant differences between the two groups in the clinical results. CONCLUSIONS: In summary, the results of this study show that foot injuries can be a safety problem for the patient and the examination of the feet in the trauma room has to be a compulsory part of the algorithm. Although the majority of delayed diagnosed foot fractures demonstrated comparable results to the immediately diagnosed fractures, approximately 10% might have benefited from an earlier diagnosis. Even if there were no significant differences in the clinical results, we have to be aware that missing a fracture in the foot can lead to worse results in the complete polytrauma care

Sleep timing is more important than sleep length or quality for medical school performance

Item does not contain fulltextOverwhelming evidence supports the importance of sleep for memory consolidation. Medical students are often deprived of sufficient sleep due to large amounts of clinical duties and university load, we therefore investigated how study and sleep habits influence university performance. We performed a questionnaire-based study with 31 medical students of the University of Munich (second and third clinical semesters; surgery and internal medicine). The students kept a diary (in 30-min bins) on their daily schedules (times when they studied by themselves, attended classes, slept, worked on their thesis, or worked to earn money). The project design involved three 2-wk periods (A: during the semester; B: directly before the exam period--pre-exam; C: during the subsequent semester break). Besides the diaries, students completed once questionnaires about their sleep quality (Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index [PSQI]), their chronotype (Munich Chronotype Questionnaire [MCTQ]), and their academic history (previous grades, including the previously achieved preclinical board exam [PBE]). Analysis revealed significant correlations between the actual sleep behavior during the semester (MS(diary); mid-sleep point averaged from the sleep diaries) during the pre-exam period and the achieved grade (p = 0.002) as well as between the grades of the currently taken exam and the PBE (p = 0.002). A regression analysis with MS(diary) pre-exam and PBE as predictors in a model explained 42.7% of the variance of the exam grade (effect size 0.745). Interestingly, MS(diary)--especially during the pre-exam period-was the strongest predictor for the currently achieved grade, along with the preclinical board exam as a covariate, whereas the chronotype did not significantly influence the exam grade